Signs-spoilers! Go away if you don't want to be spoiled.

To me the "twist" involved the reaccuring memory of the last conversation Mel Gibson had with his wife. When Gibson lost faith he took her final words as nothing more that random brain patterns just before her death. Then at the end, when the aliens had his son he took that memory as a plan of action(for himself "too see" the event as a miracle and for his brother to "swing away.") I think that some of the disappointment in the movie is atributed to the lack of any big special effects but to me it it was very interesting and suspenceful.

hmm well I am not disappointed in the lack of special effects. hehe one of the few things I praised the movie for. Like I said earlier. Takes a lot of guts in this day an age to tell and alien flick with not much alien And the first part of the movie is very well done...up to right about the Brazil footage...there it seemed to switch gears and start to unravel a bit....seemed to be trying to switch over into action/supsense mode from pure supsense and never quite made the transition. heh one thing I find interesting about the reviews I have been reading...a lot of the just blast the scene where Mel is telling the children about when they were born...saying that it is out of place...that was the one scene to me that seemed perfectly in place for what it was...a distraction for the children to what was going on around them..getting them focused elsewhere...and I thought worked well...hehehe

Ed, I agree. I thought the comments to his Kids were perfect. If anything further set in stone that his Daughter wasn't exactly "normal". Sounded to me that she was almost gifted into knowing just what to do unconsciously to help her family...